Battle of K'lai
by KonisForce
Summary: Starship Troopers fanfic. Two MI platoons take-and-hold a Skinny spaceport, and stir up more trouble than they bargained for.
1. Disclaimer and Dramatis

Starship Troopers is the work of Robert A. Heinlein, and damn good work it is, too. My respects to the man and his mission, and all who enjoyed the movie should read the book. All who didn't enjoy the movie should also read the book. This story is dedicated to my friend Chris Munich, a Marine reservist, who was recently in Iraq. I'm glad he's home.

2/18/09 -

I haven't done anything with this for a while, but a recent review did shame me into action. I do have a final chapter for it, but it isn't fleshed out. More to come with that later. I edited the 1st two chapters for a few minor typos as well as some style concerns. On re-reading the original for the umpteenth time I remembered that the Old Man doesn't swear, so I touched that up a bit.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed / (kindly) nagged me. I'm thinking about jumping back into the Maritius / Total Annihilation story as well.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Cpl. Dean – Protagonist. Assistant Squad Leader of 1st squad under Sergeant Bright.

Sgt. Bright – Squad Leader of 1st squad.

Pvt. DiMaglio – Private in the 1st squad, under Bright.

PFC. Claybaugh – Scout with Weber's Wombats.

Lt. Weber – Commanding officer of Weber's Wombats, Cpl. Dean's platoon.

Sgt. Kristoff – Squad Leader of 3rd squad, stationed east of 1st squad during the battle.

Pvt. Jonesy – Member of Bright's 1st squad

Lance Cpl. McGeorge – Leader of the artillery unit in Dean's keeping

Lt. Rodgers – Commanding officer of Rodger's Raiders, the platoon north of the Wombats.

More coming as the story progresses.


	2. Touchdown

Let me tell you, some of the best moments of my life have been spent all by myself, in the dark, two hundred miles off the ground.

You see, I'm a cap trooper by trade. Terran Mobile Infantry, and proud of it. I love this service with all my big heart and all my dumb head. Oh, now, it's got its share of troubles, just like every army in history does. One of the main ones in the MI is that there's never enough to do. When you're on board your ship – the _Eisenhower_ in my case – there really isn't much for a soldier to do; no ground to hold, no one to shoot at. So the powers that is tend to make things up for you to do. Busy-work, like. I mean, sure, there's _some_ valid things, like checking and re-checking all the suits. I'm sure not gonna get in one that hasn't been warmed up by someone who knows their ears from their ankles, because that's my life on the line. But polishing bulkheads? You hear some old troopers tell the story about the Lost Company, who didn't see any action for so long that the Marines scrubbed their way straight through the hull and spaced the whole ship. It feels like that sometimes in the MI.

But when you're on the ground, boy-oh is there plenty to do. Like get shot at. That's a pretty time-consuming, all-encompassing sort of pastime right there. And if you've got some spare time, why, you might give a thought to shooting back. So when you're on the ground, you're usually fighting. And when you're in space, they give you something to do. Which is why I say that the best times of my life are when I'm two hundred miles off the ground. I'm not on the ground, I'm not in space, and there's no one around but just _me_.

Now, "how did I get here?" should be the first question you ask. Well, I'll answer that, but it my own good time. First, how did I get to this particular planet? That's something that I don't particularly need to know. I'm a cap trooper, so I just go where they tell me. Oh, if they told me to go burn down my own house, I'd probably think twice about it, and they'd have to give me a pretty good reason to go and wreck any human planet, but luckily that's not where I am. We're stuck in a pretty big war (geez, it's practically evolution at work by now) with the Arachnids. No one back on Earth seems to think it's big, but that's because so far Naval Command has managed to keep any of the bugs' comets from smacking into good old Terra, and no one can be bothered to worry about the minor 'skirmishes' in the outlying colony worlds. But things are gonna heat up right soon here, so we need all the friends we can get.

Which is why I'm floating high over K'lai. That's a Skinny world. The Skinnies aren't exactly our friends, and you'd think that once I get down there, they'd be even less so. Which is true. Right now they're what Intel is calling 'belligerent neutrals'. They'd rather not have any of this shooting going on, so they're trying to let everyone know how they feel about it. Which includes not cooperating a lick with us nice, polite Terrans. What they don't realize is that the Bugs don't really care whether or not someone wants a war; they'll deliver one anyway, C.O.D. So we're just trying to do a little aggressive persuasion to get the Skinnies to stop bein' victims and start bein' soldiers. Plus – and this is the real reason if y'ask me – K'lai's got enough asteroids to make for a decent shipyard or two, and some real potential as a refueling stop on the way to Bug territory.

So that explains why I'm over K'lai. As to how I got precisely here, that's easy too. I got strapped into my suit, someone stuck me in an oversized egg, and the _Eisenhower_ shot me from the God-almighty-biggest cannon you've ever seen. Simple as that.

So that gets us up to date. I'm moving at terminal velocity toward K'lai, surrounded by half a meter of ablative shielding, electronics, and radar jamming. If all went according to plan, the _Ike_ laid down most of my squad mates somewhere near me, and the rest of my platoon within at least spitting distance. But I'll just have to trust to fate when it comes to that, because my suit's powered down and I'm falling fast.

The outer layer burns off pretty quickly once the atmosphere starts thickening, and the feel of the outer shell going is pretty much no different from the normal shakes you get by hitting the air. But once the outer layer is off, then you can tell. The brakes on the second shell start to bite and things get really choppy for a while there, until one by one those burn up and slide off as well. As soon as they're off, the inner shell of the egg lights up all its electronics and give the suit a shake to wake it up as well.

This is the first a cap trooper really hears about where he is in relation to the ground. The last layer's the most elegant – there's a rangefinder radar at your feet, and three 'chutes at your head. Now, you'd think that someone would be a little worried about a radar advertising their presence, because someone else would just have to lob a few missiles – passive tracking, even – and that'd be the end of 'em. But two things: first, the radar isn't that strong, and it's certainly not very focused. And two, between all the parts of your egg that you've lost, everything that's come off your buddies' eggs, and the dummies that your ship throws out before and after you, the sky is such an awful mess of tinfoil and confetti that bees couldn't find flowers in it, much less a missile finding me.

At this point, I was about ten miles off the ground. On K'lai – much like on Earth – that meant that a 'chute wouldn't have enough air to even open correctly, let alone slow me down at all. Besides, computers know better 'n' me when it comes to that, so I let them decide. It takes a degree to make a computer, and it sure didn't take one to make me, so I figure the computer's got a better head on it than I do. I didn't have too long before the third shell popped the first 'chute and it jerked me short and hard, then tore off. The second one jerked a little gentler and lasted a little longer, and the third one looked like it would be in it for the long haul. I thumbed the proximity reading again – two and a half miles – and decided to blow the 'chute and the shell.

Explosives blew the bolts holding the suit to the shell, then blew the shell into eight neat chunks, sending them out and away. They're built to look as much like an armored man as a plain hunk of metal possibly can, and add to the overall confusion up above. But geez, is it ever nice to be free of 'em. I spread out my limbs and stretched for a few seconds, then spread myself open face down and took a look around.

We were coming down on the capital city of K'lai, and my platoon's job was to grab the spaceport and sit on it until the Skinnies squealed or some other cap troopers cut in on the dance. The spaceport was dead south of the city, and a little mountain range separated it from the capital. It started in the west, grew to a respectable fifteen hundred feet high or so, then joined the huge north-south mountain range to the east of K'lai that the briefing had dubbed the Himalayas. Another platoon – Rodgers' Raiders - was going to be more offensively-minded, trying to neutralize any threats in the capital and then hold the river that meandered out of the Himalayas, east to west, through the city. Naval Intelligence didn't really know what kind of defenses the Skinnies were mounting, but the range of strength they gave meant that one platoon could handle the city's south half, but not the south and the north both.

I chose just the wrong moment to flip down my infrared snoopers, having forgotten entirely that Lt. Alderman back aboard the _Eisenhower_ was firing a few 'counter-insurgency' rounds. I don't really know why there were called that, but I can tell you what they _did_. They made a huge noise, an even bigger flash, and did nothing else. One of my instructors once explained the 'counter-insurgency' tactics to me like this: "All we're doing is advertising, loud and clear, that anyone with anything valuable had better keep it out of sight, if they don't want it shot off." Given that it was just before sunrise, I doubted anyone would've been awake to be scared, but I bet it worked anyway. These things'd wake you up, scare you silly, then make you pass out again from fear.

I switched the proximity warning over to 'audio' and listened as the pings built up in my audio circuit. I keyed the first 'chute from my suit, which snapped me feet-first to the ground, and let me kill some time while my retinas grew back. After I unloaded that first 'chute, I flipped the snoopers up and took another look around.

From my briefing, I knew I was coming down as close to on target as can be expected (God bless sweet little Lt. Alderman) which was just perfect for me. I'd been sitting on an 'assistant squad leader' post for the last two missions, both of which were just uneventful enough to mean that I basically had never held the job before. Tight formation in the air meant a tight formation when you touched down, and was I ever glad of that. But I didn't have long to relish it as the ground was crawling toward me alarmingly fast. I popped the second chute at a thousand yards, rode it down to a hundred, and made a final landing on my jets. Nice and pretty.

Our platoon was over-sized for this mission, since the planners had been nice and given Lt. Weber two heavy weapons squads to play with. Since we weren't sure of how they'd be needed, both of them were coming down between the little mountain range – briefing had nicknamed it the Alps – and the spaceport. There were about ten miles of open land around the spaceport, and that was where the two heavy weapons squads, Weber's command and control squad, and another standard Marauder squad was coming down. Me and my boys were up north, closer to the Alps, with Sgt. Kristoff's squad, the 3rd, and the last two of the platoons were coming down as close to the spaceport as Lt. Alderman felt comfortable with. And believe me, she's plenty comfortable with up-close-and-personal.

I keyed my ambient electronics to full as soon as I touched down, and that's when the suit really lit up. Friend-or-foe radio and tightbeam laser pulses shot out, spotting every MI suit around me and lighting up my mini-map just above my forehead inside my helmet. Eight of the nine in my squad were within five hundred yards of me, which is practically a campfire in terms of suit warfare, and Jonesy was closing the distance quickly (why was it always him?).

Sgt. Bright opened the channel to the whole squad. "Glad to see we're all here. The Lieutenant doesn't have any threat assessments for the moment, so let's go find some. North, by twos, two hundred yards separation. Sit on the Alps west of the pass. Go!" he called. Two hundred yards was pretty much dancin' with each other, and that meant our Y-racks had to be off. At two hundred yards any grenade your suit tossed would roll to a stop just about at your buddy's feet. Just as well: this wasn't a raid, we were here to stay for a bit, and that meant conserving ammo.

The other major difference between this and a raid was armament. I'd raided two Skinny planets before – one to cause havoc, the other a legitimate snatch-and-grab to get some of their Bug research – and both those times we didn't have rifles. Rockets, H-bombs, plenty of grenades, the Y-racks, and flamers for anti-personnel, but just things that made a lot of noise or a lot of damage. This time, we all had our assault rifles with us, and that makes any cap trooper feel warm and fuzzy.

I tried lifting an assault rifle when I was out of my armor once. Once was enough. For one thing, it's about four feet long. For another, it's about a hundred fifty pounds. I can stick my pointer finger down the barrel, whatever that means for the caliber. And all the munitions we carry in our Y-racks are compatible with the launcher on the underside of the rifle. Plus, it hooks into the HUD in the suit's helmet and gives me distance, bearing, and leading shots on targets. Outside of my suit, my gun is my best friend. Inside my suit, well, there's pretty much just room for me.

Anyway, I peeled off with my partner Pvt. DiMaglio and started bouncing north. We were a few hundred yards west of the main road that ran between the capital and the spaceport. I popped down my snoopers and took a peek while DiMaglio and I bounced north in long, powered strides. There were some ground vehicles littered along the roadway. Most were stopped, a few were moving a bit too fast, but either way they'd paid attention to the big bang a few moments earlier. A few sets of mag-train tracks ran between the opposing lanes, and I had to fight the urge to lob a grenade into the middle of the mess. _Battle, not raid_, I thought. _We're here to stay for a bit._

The terrain was all flat and dry on the way north, with the occasional land-intensive industry on the way up. I spotted things that on Terra would've been wastewater treatment plants and maybe a few salt farms, but the occasional Skinnies we saw didn't seem too interested in us. The skies were beginning to light up with anti-aircraft fire (didn't they know we were all on the ground?) and sirens were wailing intermittently. I flicked my audio to wide-open passive and made a quick pass through the circuits; Skinnies were chattering excitedly all over the place, so someone had realized we were here.

Bright's voice crackled in my ear, and a quick glance at my HUD told me he was using the personal channel to his assistant squad leader. "Dean, keep your eyes peeled for somewhere for the artillery."

"Sir?" I asked, not quite sure what he was really asking for.

"The lieutenant says he probably won't need the heavy weapons down at the spaceport. So if he gives them to us in the north, we'll make a choke point out of Alps, right?" Bright's voice seemed to request sainthood for having to make it so clear.

"Yessir. Direct fire, or indirect?" I asked him. I thought it was a pretty intelligent question.

His tone ceded that it wasn't the most unintelligent question I could've thought up. "Hmm, both. Somewhere defensible on the south side of the ridge for the indirect, and whatever you can get – away from civilians – for the direct."

All the while DiMaglio and I had been bouncing north with a pair from our squad to our left and the other five off to our right. Bright was moving north along the road, almost holding hands with Kristoff from the other squad assigned to the Alps, and the rest of Kristoff's squad was spread out to the east of the road, doing the same as my boys. Kristoff and Bright both had propaganda recordings in Skinny language that Naval Intelligence had given them, basically calling on the civilian population to surrender and telling them they would not be harmed. Hell, if I met me in a dark alley, I'd sure surrender.

In the foothills of the Alps, our suits started picking up a lot more movement. We were passing into a vaguely residential area – low cost housing for the spaceport and wastewater crews, maybe. Mostly small two- or three-story buildings, lots of landscaping. Still plenty of room for us to land and take off, and none of the Skinnies were putting up any trouble. They were easy to spot, too. A Skinny in civilian clothes lights up infrared snoopers like a Christmas tree, but they've got some thermal-dampening armor and things so that their infantry aren't quite that obvious.

Once onto the slope of the ridge proper, there weren't no more Skinnies and there weren't no more houses either. I guessed that it was probably a nature preserve or something, and at the top of the last jump that put DiMaglio and I on the ridgeline, I took a look around. Sure enough, solid blue-green trees and shrubs all the way along the east-west ridge of the Alps. Down in the northern foothills there were some houses, nicer-looking ones this time, but we were all clear of population along the ridge.

The last of the chaff from the capsules we'd all been wearing was fluttering out of the air, and the surface-to-air missiles were finally dying down. Way off to the east, in the high eastern mountains we were calling the Himalayas, an instillation was still throwing off enough radar and sonar tracking that it glowed in my EM warfare HUD. I figured anything with that much radar – _active_ radar, no less – was either a spaceport or a SAM installation. And we knew where the spaceport was, so it had to be an anti-air site. I didn't have anything that could hit it, but Bright, as squad leader, did (I was jealous) and he'd probably want to shoot it before Kristoff – the other squad leader – had a chance to.

I kicked my jaw switch over to the 'superior' channel and told Bright, "Hey, anti-air installation, bearing 65 or so, eighteen miles."

"Hey, you're getting better. I was expecting you to tell me about it after the explosion," Bright said jokingly.

"Wha?" I began, then stopped as two things happened. One, I realized that he'd already fired a missile. Two, the anti-air installation realized he'd fired a missile as well, as the pee-wee nuke detonated on the hill and outshone the rising sun for just a moment. The well-known mushroom convection current was building as he chuckled at me over the radio. "Hey, buck up, Dean. That was a good target. Kristoff didn't even see it until my nuke pointed it out for him." Well, I figured beating _one_ squad leader to the punch wasn't bad. "You find those artillery sites yet?"

"No sir," I answered quickly. "On it." I jaw-switched over to the area-broadcast and turned the power down so that only DiMaglio would hear me. "Alright, let's look around for artillery spots." DiMaglio answered affirmative with a click of his tongue, and I left the channel ready and waiting as the two of us began bouncing around the hillside in a circle-sweep pattern, radar cutting a wide downward swath to give a clear map of the ground.

I heard the light 'pings' while my suit's impact sensor told me something was going on. The sound was like someone ringing a cheap glass with their spoon before they make a toast, and I knew from basic that I was being hit by small-arms fire. Now, I don't much care in a suit – it would take a few really lucky shots to worry me – but I just have a moral aversion to being shot at, right? I spun toward the shots and took a look, all the while jumping so that I wouldn't be where I had been.

I didn't get anything with a visual sweep, so I slipped my snoopers down and looked again. Remember, I was in the air for all of this. Time is the one thing you never get back, and an MI who can't multi-task on three channels is usually a dead one. The snoopers lit up a handful of Skinnies outside some building with a watchtower next to it. A park ranger station? Local hunting club? I didn't really know if they were military or civilian, but they were shooting at me. I decided to defer the decision anyway.

"Hey, Sarge, I found some locals. A little belligerent." Another shot hit me while I was broadcasting.

"Are they shooting at you?"

"Yeah, but . . ."

"Then they're not civilians." Bright clicked off the transmission, and I checked my HUD.

DiMaglio was seven hundred yards west southwest of me, and there wasn't another cap trooper within a thousand yards. I reached up, plucked a grenade from my Y-rack, and lobbed it in the general direction of the Skinnies while bouncing perpendicular to the grenade's path. As soon as it touched off, I flicked the snoopers up and closed on the location. Decent-sized hole, no one around. The watchtower was still standing, and I went over to it to see if maybe it would do as an elevated artillery location. I gave a little hop and landed on the top, but the thing groaned once and started toppling. I got off before my gyros protested and that was that, because if it wasn't going to hold me, it sure wasn't going to hold one heavy weapon and three heavy weapons specialists.

"Dean, check this out," DiMaglio called. I always keep one eye on my tactical HUD, so I didn't even have to check his bearing before I leapt out towards him. I was there in six bounds. He was perched on the end of a good-sized rock outcropping, mostly flat, that pointed a little bit east of north, almost straight at the city. Steep sides of twenty yards ended in the ground below, so that a cap trooper would be able to jump up, but not much else. Forest around it gave some cover to retreat into, but it was pretty exposed. Still, might be good for the artillery.

"Might do. Beacon it, tell Sgt. Bright, and let's look for a spot for the mortar."

We did just that, and spent another fifteen minutes bouncing around that hill. Occasional orders from Bright kept us from stepping on each other's toes, and he switched our pairs' search areas every five minutes to give us new terrain to look at. But after twenty minutes of 'scouting for artillery locations', I was pretty certain we were just killing time.

Boy, was I right.


	3. Man Down

We'd been on the planet for about forty-five minutes by the mission counter when Lieutenant Weber came on the 'com. "Gentlemen, the spaceport is held. We will now move to secure it against counterattack, and prepare to reinforce Lieutenant Rodgers if necessary. 2nd squad, in the 'port. 4th and 5th in a wide patrol sweep around the 'port, out to eight miles west, east, and south. 4th, I want you to send your scout elements to 1st, 5th, to the 3rd. One weapons squad each with the 1st and 3rd. My 7th squad will stay on the main highway, ready to reinforce either position."

That's what the old man said should happen, so that's what happened. The heavy weapons boys brought up their toys and set 'em up (the artillery went in the spot DiMaglio had scouted), and defensive positions around them became 1st squad's job. Now, you may find it strange that I keep talking about the 'heavy weapons squad' when I just mentioned that Bright had blotted out an anti-air site with a nuclear warhead. A little one, admittedly, but still a nuke.

Well, these boys have some weapons that make our rifles look like plucking a chicken in a stiff wind. And the other thing they've got is precision. In spades. Sure, Bright can light up a hillside with a shoulder-mounted nuke, but that's just the problem; it's a whole hillside. If he'd wanted to take out a single city block at that range, he'd've had no chance. These guys _do_, because most of 'em are that good. If you point out a house for them, they'll ask "Which room?"

So DiMaglio and I found ourselves baby-sitting the artillery piece, along with two other privates in marauder suits. Bright had taken to guarding the mortar, and he had the other four men in the squad with him, so I have myself my own little 'command' under my watchful eye. I told DiMaglio and the other two to entrench while I sat myself next to the cannon and watched the techies play with it. Now, 'entrenching' is a strange thing to say about a cap trooper, too. I mean, the point of the suit is that you can move, and when someone shoots something big at you, you're not there when it hits. So why would a cap trooper ever entrench? The term's something of a misnomer these days, so 'entrenching' is just jargonese for 'wander around and get acquainted with the landscape'. Troopers will entrench in a particular chunk of land and get to know it, so that when they _do _have to move, which they inevitably will, they'll know where to move _to._

But rank hath its privileges and I have my obsessions, so I sat around to watch them put together their cannon instead of 'entrenching'. A heavy weapons squad has two heavy weapons with three techs each, and three spare troopers around for ordnance and logistics work. Ordnance and logistics is a nice way of saying 'ammo gopher'. The three men stationed with me were headed up by Lance Corporal McGeorge, who waved a friendly 'hello' to me as he and his two mates leapt up over the ridge.

"Hey there!" I called on the short-range wideband. Each of the three was in a standard marauder suit, but carrying a few less weapons than me or any other average mudfoot. And each had a chunk of their cannon with them.

"Hey Dean. That the spot?" Cpl. McGeorge asked, waving toward the outcropping. I clicked an affirmative, and the three bounded over and dropped their loads. With a little suit-mounted welder and a few other tools, they'd slapped together a gun with a fifteen mile range in under two minutes. Amazing things us humans can do these days. And two minutes after they'd finished putting it together, two of their ordnance boys show up, drill holes in the rock, and mount the thing to reduce recoil. They took care to mount it using explosive bolts, but left a drill just in case.

So now we held the spaceport, we were pretty well entrenched along our northern front, and we had a nice wide patrol to catch anything south of the Alps. Weber's Wombats were doing fine, and it seemed like Rodgers' Raiders weren't holding up their end of the deal. Turns out, they really weren't.

I spent about two hours up on that ridge with nothing to do except watch whatever I could get on the tac readouts. Our platoon 'net wasn't tied in to the Raiders', so I couldn't get any direct information. But Lt. Weber had given 1st platoon the scouts from 4th platoon, so Bright had eleven men to play with. Each squad had two men in scout suits, which are a little quicker on the draw, carry less weaponry, and allow for extended stays in the same location, quietly. I don't know how they do it exactly (the force-feedback in my own suit took me enough skull sweat to understand) but something electromagnetic in a scout suit helps block its electromagnetic emissions. A buffer, or a damper, or something. Either way, more is less with scout suits, and they tend to be quieter – in all ways – than your normal marauder.

DiMaglio was in a scout suit, and Bright had the other with his unit, but the two we'd borrowed were working their way north through the mixed residential and commercial districts between the Alps and the beginning of K'Lai proper and its accompanying larger buildings. PFC Claybaugh, one of 1st squad's borrowed scouts, was close enough that we got little bits of the action. That, combined with talking to some Raiders back on the _Eisenhower_, let me piece together what ended up happening.

The Raiders came down pretty much on the button, or as close to it as you can when you're landing fifty-four armored men who've just been shot out of a cannon. Because of all the skyscrapers around – quite a few above sixty stories – some squads had members who were a hundred yards away on the x/y grid, but add in the z dimension and they were all spread out. Plus, just because of the spin of the orbit we were coming in on, the Wombats got out to tubes first, then the Raiders. So we landed on our cushy assignment with the element of surprise, and the Raiders came down to a little surprise of their own.

Like I said, suits are wonderfully mobile things, and they're wonderful when they are mobile. But in a city, with buildings sixty stories high, they're not very mobile. They're pretty much restricted to the same highways and byways that a groundcar would follow, because even with jumpjets, no cap trooper's going to be leaping buildings _that_ tall in a single bound. That means that there's a lot fewer point B's you can go to from point A. And there's more of a chance for some infantryman with a grenade or an RPG to get lucky. And get lucky they did.

The Raiders began taking light casualties from the beginning, but that was to be expected in guerilla-style urban fighting. Rodgers found, occupied, and fortified a command post from the get-go, and the wounded began coming in there to be treated and have their suits patched up. But the city guard and the Skinny military had plenty of presence in K'lai, and for that first hour every Skinny casualty seemed to be replaced by two more. As soon as one Skinny unit was on the run, another one had just formed up and marched in. So the Raiders ended up fighting an enemy that kept coming back from the dead. I found out later that Weber wanted to go in and help out (hell, all the Wombats would've gone in if we'd known) but the two Eggheads along with his squad wouldn't allow it, saying that we didn't know what the Skinnies' force disposition was, and the spaceport was still the primary objective. I guess they were right, in the big picture. But it's real hard for an MI to know his fellow's in trouble and not go in to help. I'm glad I didn't really know, not like I know now, anyway.

Round about touchdown plus two hours, just when I was getting really bored, the Raiders got up to their necks in it. They'd been having mobility troubles because of the terrain as it was, but then the Skinnies released their heavy infantry. At this point in the war, the Skinnies and us hadn't shared all our secrets about the military. So while the Terran Federation had the MI, which was pretty much the only infantry type in the military, the Skinnies had two types. There were the standard ground-sloggers, who carried around pretty light arms and wore unpowered, thin armor. They weren't much different than Terran soldiers before suits. And then the Skinnies had their heavy infantry, which was big 'mechs that mounted scaled-up sensor arrays, hand weapons, and everything else.

Now, 'mechs really aren't much of a match for MI. One-on-one, an MI is just too quick and fights too dirty for a lumbering sixty-foot-tall robotic oaf. Five MI to one, the only contest is to see who can disarm it the quickest. And since it takes about as much effort to make five or six mechs as it does to outfit fifty or sixty MI, the destructive force is really pretty uneven. But mechs do carry large weapons, and they do carry a lot of them. And the same rules of statistics applied as with the infantry's grenades. They got lucky. And they were carrying quite a few back-up shots in case they didn't get lucky the first time. So the Raiders found themselves trying to hide from the mechs, while staying on the move from the infantry, while trying to inflict maximum military casualties with minimum civilians casualties, while protecting their Old Man and the wounded. No wonder they didn't tell us, we would've charged straight in.

But our Old Man figured out a way we could get some glory for ourselves, and a brief break for the Raiders at the same time.

"Look, Weber, you need to hold that spaceport," Rodgers insisted for the fourth time.

"I know, but we've got it well in hand, and I can send in just a few . . ."

"No, you can't and you know it. If we fall here, you're gonna need your whole platoon to hold 'em at the Alps."

"Well, we've got to be able to do something," Weber demanded.

"Distract 'em, or kill 'em from there, but I'm not letting you move, that's an order."

"Yessir," Weber agreed stonily.

"That being said, any distraction should come quickly. We're down to our last fallback position before my headquarters here, and as soon as we're backpedaling from there, I'm going to signal a full tactical withdrawal to a pick-up twenty miles west, toward the ocean."

"Understood. Do you have an uplink to _Ike_, or should I relay it for you?"

"We've got it, Weber."

Lieutenant Weber withdrew the suit jack from the mobile 'com station. The two eggheads – military consultants, but not MI – were hard at work at the other points on the station, trying to make sense of the Skinny data and chatter that was flowing back and forth across the airwaves. Weber turned to them and broadcast.

"Gentleman, I need some non-military, non-essential targets."

The eggheads looked up, and one smiled. "What did you have in mind, sir?"

"Just a little counter-insurgency," Weber said with a smiled. He jawed his radio over to the broadcast channel for his artillery units' gunners.

"Okay, boys," Bright cut in. "The Lieutenant is giving some fire coordinates to the gunners, and he thinks that might bring some Skinnies knockin' on our door. So let's spilt up, entrench, and look alive. Suits to full stealth." An MI suit has got variable stealth, with the higher settings having no immediate effect on a suit. But a suit that's run on full stealth for a long time will see a lot more downtime for general maintenance, and we're usually moving so quickly that stealth doesn't matter. But we can lay a bit low when we need to.

I reviewed my HUD for a moment, then opened the channel to my little ½-squad. "Alright everyone, I want you to meet up for a second to plug into the beacon for silent communication, then we'll spread out to individual entrenched spots. Artillery boys, you just do your thing."

They started doing their thing just about when I told them to, with a great roar of the gun. I don't know what they were targeting, or if there were other things firing, but I saw something big explode about five seconds after they fired. Then again, there were quite a few explosions by this point.

All the 1st squad Wombats met at the beacon and jacked into the physical communications ports on it. Suits normally communicate through short-wave and tightbeam laser, but laser is line-of-sight, so you can't use it when you're hiding in valleys, and short-wave is broadcast, so bad guys can zero in on it. So suits came with thin, easily-broken cables that could be used to jack directly together, to let you communicate silently, without broadcasting anything. The beacons that we use to mark locations have on-board communications, so they can tie into the platoon 'net, and as an added bonus they can act as a hub. So we all plugged in and then gingerly moved back out to our positions. After a quick check to make sure everyone could hear, it was all silent except for the roar of the artillery piece, explosions, and other sundry warfare background noise.

"Dean, plug everyone into your beacon, then get set to receive a jack-in from mine," Bright told me.

I let myself smile a bit before I jawed him back. "Already plugged in. Have your man jack into our beacon."

"Alright. Nice work, Dean," Bright said, then clicked off.

I didn't know it at the time, but Claybaugh and the other scout we were borrowing were about a half-mile north of our position, spotting likely municipal targets that wouldn't inflict too many casualties. The rest of the freed-up scouts were spread out just like them, with Weber's squad's scouts as far as the Himalayas, all looking for the most expensive-looking architecture they could find. Claybaugh told me after the mission that he was watching as our artillery boys put a shell through the dome of what looked like a municipal building. It was a flash-bang (and flash-bang artillery does quite a bit of both) and they managed to put it into the dome, and they'd gotten the distance just right so it exploded _inside_ the dome. He said half of the top-floor windows blew out, but the dome stayed up, and nothing lit on fire. Now _that_, my friends, is persuasive.

Well, it didn't take very long of this kind of treatment before the commanding officer of the Skinny defense started resenting our presence. Claybaugh reported some infantry and ground vehicles were coming down the western road toward the Alps, and Kristoff's squad had the same experience down the eastern road. Then someone reported the first 'mech, and we were pretty certain at that point that we'd gotten their attention.

"Freeze," Bright ordered, and we froze. Cap troopers are great at freezing. We can do it for hours, in any situation, in any climate, in any condition. We did it a whole bunch in basic. So we did it now. Nobody moved, and I'm pretty sure that Claybaugh and the other scout were frozen, too. "Prepare countermeasures," Bright ordered, and I flipped through the firing options of my Y-rack menu on my HUD.

We've got some electronic countermeasures that can look a whole lot like a suit when they try, and those are useful when you're trying to convince someone there's more of you than there really are, or that you're someplace where you really aren't. In this particular instance, Bright waited on the order to fire, and I wasn't too sure why. I understood in the next couple seconds, though.

I flipped down my snoopers and peered north from the little knoll I was hiding behind. Even when it's not moving, a 'mech throws off a lot of heat from its fusion plant, and the friction from movement means that they're even a little painful to look at with snoopers. Heat sinks throw big plumes of hot air out of their shoulders, and you can just watch for those like smoke signals if you're ever looking for one. I watched while the first two came south, one on each of the highways. They were little guys, with back-jointed legs, built for speed and stability in turns. Scout 'mechs. Next came two mediums, humanoid things with hand-held weapons, or shoulder, torso, or head mounts. They split up, one on each highway, just like the scouts. That meant our squad and Kristoff's had equal responsibility. Then a heavy fella stomped out from between two skyscrapers, and he shifted toward the west highway. That meant us.

Suddenly a brighter light flared in my snoopers and I flipped them up before the light hurt, then zoomed in with the standard view. My passive sensors gave a tentative contact to a few missiles coming out of the western medium-sized 'mech. I felt my stomach clench while my HUD warned me that the missiles were sweeping radar over me, but chances are bad that they would lock on a still, stealthed suit at that distance, and they didn't. They were, however, chasing after the artillery piece.

One of the heavy weapons squaddies fired off two ECM rounds from his Y-rack to confuse the missiles, and then they set about moving their piece right quick. They blew the bolts and picked the whole thing up, dragging it with jump-jets to a few yards away where they started pulling it apart. Well, at least we knew that they'd spotted some of us, anyway.

The mechs came marching on, moving south at the speed of the slowest – the heavy one bringing up the rear. Bright came on the 'com after a few moments and addressed the squad. "Alright, the eggheads with the Lieutenant came up with a firing pattern for our ECM. Here it is," the file slipped into my suit's computer and automatically linked up with the Y-rack firing software, "and fire in three, two, one, mark." The Y-racks on everyone's suit fired two decoys each, in a pattern they'd been told by the file one of the eggheads had programmed. This is yet another thing that works and I don't know how, but it's something like this: they take what they know of the Skinnies' locations, their radar capability, and the terrain, and then program the counter-measures into a disposition that makes the decoys look just like the real thing, and makes _us_ happen to be just where a radar echo would be hiding. So, in effect, the decoys were put in places that made it so that _we_ were just where the Skinnies would be looking for decoys. I dunno if it worked, but I didn't get shot, and that's good enough for me.

None of us got shot, actually. The mechs kept on coming, cautiously once the light mechs reached the foothills, but were getting a little too close to our position for my liking. By this point, our front lines were past each other, because the light mech on our side had strolled right past Claybaugh and his friend, and the medium mechs were closing to within a few hundred yards. I was wondering how long Bright was gonna wait to make an order, but we were still in a freeze and I had no reason to break it.  
Bright was talking to Kristoff at this point, syncing up their battle plans, before he came back on our com. The silent line over the beacon lit up, and Bright said, "Okay, our mortar's gonna go after that big fella. Nobody fire, I'll use a conventional warhead on the small mech. Everyone stay in cover. Claybaugh, you just lay low out there." The line went dead, then my personal line lit up. "Dean, you keep an eye on Claybaugh. If he breaks cover, be ready to give him a hand."

"Is he frozen?" I asked, wondering if the scouts were in 1st squad's net.

"My beacon's been tight-beaming to him. He knows the orders." I clicked, and Bright hung up.

The light 'mech had just crossed into extreme range of our rifle-mounted grenade launchers when my suit gave me a 'ping' to warn me of a new contact, and an echoing tone from the 'net told me everyone else had noticed it too. I hazarded a glance up.

Another medium 'mech was dropping out of the sky just behind our light 'mech, coming down on full jumpjets and backpack-mounted thrusters. Wonderful. That meant 1st squad now had a light, two mediums, and a heavy to deal with. Not too hard if we could move, but our first shots would be from cover, and we didn't have much hope of taking them all out. The 'mech landed and started looking around, mighty predatory if you ask me.

"Well, great. On my mark," Bright said. I checked my HUD to see where Claybaugh was, and it looked on the map like the northern medium 'mech was stepping on him. I zoomed in visually on the big monster just in time to see the two borrowed scouts pull off one of the more masterful ambushes I've ever seen. You know that trick where you walk behind someone, and when their foot is off the ground, you kick it so it gets caught up behind their other one? Well, Clay wasn't supposed to be moving (we were in a freeze after all) but everyone in the squad could feel the 'mark' coming, and the mech's foot was in just the right place even if it was the wrong time. Claybaugh and the other scout both dove from cover with their heads down and gunned their jump jets, slamming their shoulders into the big robot's foot. It was already swinging forward, and got caught up in its other leg, and started tumbling down.

Well, I never saw it hit the ground, because Bright called 'mark' and the doors blew off the place. We opened up with our launchers on that little mech, and the thing almost disappeared under eight well-placed grenades. One leg got blown off, and what was left of its torso toppled over to one side. Bright and another of the squad were up and moving even as the grenades were exploding, and DiMaglio and I moved too.

None too soon, either. I don't know if it was lucky, or someone locked us up that quickly or what, but two missiles slammed into the hill below that outcropping – about where I'd been – right after I left. The four of us were hellbent for that newcomer medium mech, but Bright got there first. The Skinny was flailing around, letting loose with a shoulder-mounted autocannon and a hand-held gauss rifle, but not really picking targets very well. Bright gave a good jump, blew open the cockpit with his assault rifle on the way up, then landed on the thing's head, lobbed in a grenade, and jumped.

The grenade went off with plenty of time for Bright to have gotten clear of the blast and landed well. But the grenade explosion wasn't the problem; the fusion plant let go, and that mech turned into a little star for a second there. The shockwave hit bright in mid-air, and there's no way a suit's gyros can put up with that. He started flipping end over end and dropping straight for the ground.

A couple things went through my head at this point. One, Bright's suit was almost certainly damaged, and Bright himself might be damaged too. Two, I was in charge of 1st squad. And three, a glance at the HUD told me there was still a heavy mech to deal with, plus all and sundry of the ground forces Claybaugh had told us were moving south from the city.

I kicked over to wide-band and broadcast on full. "1st squad, Bright is down, I am in command! Advance in pairs, with covering fire, and watch for infantry!" I surprised myself even as the orders sang out. I said "Roger, Wilco, Foxtrot," the suit's command overrides, to no-one in particular, and my suit's 'comm channels suddenly realigned with me as the commanding officer of 1st squad. A new line between the higher-ups cut in, right in the middle of Rodgers giving his location. There was my 'superior' channel to the Lieutenant, and there was my 'neighbor' channel to the other squad leaders. Kristoff was the only one I was interested in, and I singled him out.

"3rd squad, report!" I called out, bouncing down the hill with me eyes peeled and my rifle ready. DiMaglio was sticking close, a hundred yards away on my left flank, and another 1st squad was on my right. I clicked through the arithmetic in my head and figured that with two guys on my flanks and Bright out of action, that left five men to carry out my orders. I hollered to the man on my right, Jonesy, to get back there and pair up, then Kristoff got back to me from 3rd squad.

Kristoff's been in the service for a while, so he didn't waste any time with stupid chat like "where's Bright?" He knew where he was as well as I did, and he launched right into it. "Meeting strong resistance. Will advise." There was definitely rifle chatter in the background.

I clicked my tongue and jawed over to the Old Man channel. "Sir, Bright is down, I'm commanding 1st. Heavy mech still operational, infantry and ground vehicles expected momentarily. I'm searching for Bright, moving the perimeter up to point designated Bravo on 1st squad's 'net."

"Very good, Dean," the old man answered immediately. If it had been anyone but him, I would've called him a liar and said he hadn't actually heard a word I said, but Weber can look after fifty-three youngsters in addition to himself, and I know it. "I'm sending 4th and 5th to reinforce the Alps. Keep me appraised of casualties." Pretty light on actual instructions, if you ask me, but at least he told me what I needed to know to do my job. And I guess everyone I was trying to chatter at did have better things to do than to make me feel better.

Some elements of my squad who were in the leapfrog pattern sang out 'contacts!' and I spared more than a glance at my HUD while trying to negotiate a tricky landing and a trickier jump to clear a line of trees. Red contacts littered both sides of the highway, and faint signatures of tanks and heavier ground vehicles were moving south along the highway as quickly as they could. I opened my 'com to 1st squad and ghosted a channel to the Old Man. "1st squad, full force authorized. Repeat, all ordnance authorized." That just meant that we could use everything we'd brought with us, but didn't change the rules of engagement any – if someone decided to use a pee-wee nuke in a heavily populated area, they'd still be strung up by their toes.

I landed, with one more jump to go until I reached where I thought Bright had hit ground. I kicked my radar to full sweep, but what with the buildings in the way, I couldn't really pick out a suit. His beacon obviously wasn't working, or he would've been shining on my HUD. Something big enough to jar me smacked into my suit, and I swung up to see four Skinnies deploying around the corner of a building and a fifth pointing something automatic and hand-held in my direction. I spared them two seconds and a grenade, all the while berating myself for getting stuck daydreaming, looking for Bright. It wouldn't do to lose the assistant squad leader on the way to finding the squad leader.

"DiMaglio, tighten up and cover my left flank," I said, and heard the affirmative click even as I was jumping for the top of the little three-story building I was next to. I jumped a bit high and ended up sailing over instead of onto it, but it was all the same, Bright was down, ten feet from the wall of the next building over. No telltales on the HUD, but lights on his suit. A good sign. The way he was sprawled, not a good sign.

I clicked through 1st squad's manpower again – how do CO's keep _track_ of so many troopers! – and realized I'd totally forgotten about the borrowed scouts. Stupid! When Bright had told me, specifically and personally, to look after their behinds. Ah, well, I could use them in perimeter duty. I jawed over to the full squad again and started rapping out orders. "I found Bright, map point designate Charlie. DiMaglio and Claybaugh," no, dammit, both scout suits, "Scratch that, DiMaglio and Jonesy, take the west, strongside. 4th squad scouts, one of you take weakside to the east and set up flank. The other bounce west then come in south against the infantry lines, break 'em up, use plenty of grenades. The rest of you, I want two to keep them pinned against the south of the highway, and the rest to swing west and come at 'em from the side." I realized that I'd somehow managed to use twice as many words as Bright ever did, all to shepherd half the people. Stupid again.

Claybaugh checked in with me after I'd finished the orders. "Sir, we took care of the medium, should we try for the heavy? He's gonna give us some trouble if he can get missile lock on anyone."

They were good, but that trick wouldn't work again, and no reason to send two scout suits up against a heavy mech with armor and infantry support. "Negative, thanks but no. Orders stand." Claybaugh clicked and signed off.

There are two times when the Mobile Infantry aren't mobile. One is when someone's injured, like with Bright. Then they become something of a liability, until someone can get over there, pop open their suit, and carry them out like a babe-in-arms. The other is when they're out of power. Bright had already caused 1st squad to become somewhat immobile because of that first eventuality. We were rapidly and unknowingly approaching that second eventuality.

Weber cut into the platoon-wide 'comm line in the middle of a conversation with someone else. ". . . Definitely ballistic, unknown warhead. Could be EMP. Okay. Wombats, _freeze!_" And we froze. Good thing to. It probably saved some lives, because if anyone had been in midair when that thing went off they would've landed in a less than stylish manner, like Bright had. As it was, I froze in a half-crouch.

The Skinny nuke squeezed off its critical mass about eight miles above the city, which was enough. The pulse shockwave knocked out everything; communications, power lines, energy-fed weapons. And our suits. And a suit without power turns into a big, heavy, person-shaped coffin.


	4. Pickup

The suit is a wonderful creation, but no juice, no go. If you're inside one and it shuts down, there's no way you're going to move it. Not a chance. The designers understood this, and built in a few safeguards for just the kinda spot I was in. You can get out of a dead suit. It ain't easy, but it can be done.

I hopped to it as soon as everything in my suit went dead. Step one is to get your hand free. There's actually plenty of space inside a suit, because of the little force-feedback sensors. They need a few inches of wiggle room, and because the suit was dead, those were too. I shook my hand all around and forced all of the pin-like sensors in as far as they would go. If my suit were powered up it would've been screaming at this; suits are built to be uncomfortable when the sensors aren't slack, which is why they move. As it was, it gave me room to maneuver.

Once I popped my hand out of the gauntlet I shifted my shoulder back to get my fingers at the inside of the wrist mechanism of the suit. There's a series of manually-controlled snaps on the inside, and I proceeded to pop them all off. Once they're off, make a fist and punch, and the suit's gauntlet should pop off. It took me a few tries and some bloody knuckles, but I was free of that.

Then you have to try and squeeze your whole body into the arm of your suit. Not literally, but it feels like it. Reach as far down as you can, to give your wrist room to move, then catch the first few snaps along the suit's forearm, on the outside. Unlike the wrist snaps, these have to be on the outside for some reason they didn't bother to tell me. Once the first couple of these are clear, you can peel back the first few segments of the forearm, and from there it gets easier. Although it still feels like you're a snake trying to molt.

Once you're free up to the wrist, it's just a matter of getting to your can-opener. I wasn't sure if these things were affected by EMPs but lucky for me, they aren't. Solid-state mechanics or something like that. I'm not sure. Either way, I set to work popping open my suit along the

waist where it could hinge out, and sorta forgot that I was in a crouch. I ended up dangling down by my waist before I could entice the leg segments into letting me go, then I spilled out onto the ground.

I looked to be the first one out, which is what any good squad leader should hope for, and I glanced around quickly, looking for the nearest trooper. DiMaglio, about a hundred feet away to my left, across an intersection. Bless him, closing up on my left flank like I told him to. At least I thought it was DiMaglio, not that I could tell him from Adam in that big ape suit. But it's where he would've been, so I guessed it was him. I glanced at him, then back at Bright on the ground. The Book told me to get my house in order before I started trying for pick-up on the wounded, so I headed for DiMaglio. I broke into a run and got a couple of feet before I realized what I'd forgotten. Guns! Stupid again! Here I was in the middle of a war, and I was about to run across the street with a can opener and a smile. I darted back to my suit – all opened up like an ugly metal flower - and pulled two pistols out of the belt. One was small and handheld, the other was small and handheld for a suited trooper, which meant you had to use two hands and it had a shoulder stock. I shoved the little one in my belt, hefted the big one, and took off for DiMaglio.

He was face down; the EMP looked to have caught him at a bad time. I hoped he hadn't been in the air, but with the freeze he shoulda been on deck. The telltales on his suit were all dead of course, so the only way to find out if he was too was to crack him open. I set to work on his waist and just before I was done, his right gauntlet started wriggling: he was trying to get out like I had. I cracked him open the rest of the way and dragged him out.

"Hey, thanks, Dean," he said, panting.

"Alright, we've gotta move. Come on." DiMaglio nodded, dragging himself to his feet. "Weapons and ammo," I called back as I darted for Bright.

I was moving into the intersection and had – once again – completely forgotten I was in a war when I heard a missile streak overhead. I was at least smart enough not to hit the deck in the middle of the road, and managed to get myself to the nearest building and peer down the road. Whatever had fired the shot wasn't around, so I wrote it off for the moment, but the ten or so Skinny infantry weren't quite so easy to dismiss. They were about two blocks out, may or may not have spotted me, and were moving my direction.

DiMaglio was crouched against the opposite building, just like me but on the wrong side of the intersection. I had time to spare a glance back at Bright and my dead suit to make sure no one was behind me, then waved hard at DiMaglio and started him running my way. He was about halfway across the intersection when the Skinnies spotted him, and that's when I opened up with the big pistol. I call it a pistol, but without a suit it's really a short rifle with a long stock. I convinced them that shooting at DiMaglio would be a bad idea, and that taking cover themselves would be a good one. Didn't hit anything, I'm pretty sure, but that's usually not the point, now is it? I emptied a clip and automatically reached for another one when I realized I didn't have any more.

DiMaglio pulled in behind me. "Clip, and go check Bright," I ordered. I reloaded with what he gave me and poked my head around the corner, but couldn't see anyone. And then I had plenty of time to think of everything I'd done wrong. Starting with all the things I'd done before the EMP, and ending with the fact that I'd just now sent DiMaglio to do what should've been my job, and that I had no idea where any of my squad was. And tactically I was all backwards: instead of knowing where the baddies were and moving, they knew where I was and I was holding still. But with Bright out there wasn't much I could do about that.

I heard a few shots and stuck my head around the corner again. There was Jonesy, haulin' down the middle of the street like the dumb lunatic he always was, with the Skinnies taking shots at him. I bellowed something indistinct at him and he ducked into a doorway, then I opened up with another clip and this time I got someone. That scared them enough that they kept their heads down and Jonesy trotted up.

"Hey, sir. I dinged up my suit pretty good, I was in the air when it hit."

"Seen any sign of anyone else?"

"No, sir." I sized him up. Didn't look hurt, only had his small pistol with him. Then I remembered; scout suits don't come with those. I was lucky he brought anything at all.

"Take this, hold this corner. Bright's over there," I gestured with my head while handing him the big pistol, "and we're gonna set up a firebase. Did you get his location before the EMP hit?" He said 'yessir,' so I took that as a good sign. Jonesy was a bit behind the curve, so if he'd figured things out chances were good that everyone else had too. "Alright, we'll set up a fire base and hope people come here.

DiMaglio was standing over Bright but hadn't popped him open yet. I trotted up and asked why. "Who knows how he landed? We could kill him getting him out. He could be all banged up in there, and we've got no way to know." Made sense to me, so I set about the next thing I could think of.

There were enough bits and pieces along the road to make something of a wall, so DiMaglio and I did. Then we grabbed my suit rifle – the big hundred-fifty-pounder – and lugged it over behind the wall. It's got a bi-pod built in so when you're not in a suit, it can be used as a darn effective heavy automatic gun. With DiMaglio behind that on the east side and Jonesy covering the west, I felt a bit better.

I started raiding my suit for grenades and other sundry consumables, emptying the Y-rack and laying things out. Then Bright's suit as well, then DiMaglio's. By this point, DiMaglio had gotten some contacts on the east corner, but with that rifle he put an APC out of commission, and that made 'em think twice. All the while I was thinking that I wasn't in quite as tight a spot as I'd thought I was. Sure, there were a few Skinnies coming at us, but without comm – and they sure didn't have comm after that EMP – they couldn't tell anyone what they'd found. And I'd let everyone from my own squad on up to the Lieutenant know where I'd be, and that's where I was, so that's where I planned to stay. That got me feeling a bit better.

I started thinking about kicking in a door or two and getting the feel for a building when two more from my squad showed up. Bester and Aligma, the two I'd put on the East. These guys rolled up, strapped with all the hand-helds they could salvage, a few weapons from some Skinnies they'd met and had a chat with, and as much Y-rack ordnance as they could bring, too. I set them to work installing Bright's rifle on the western corner to relieve Jonesy.

This is about where things started to get real hairy. I don't remember much from this, but it was about fifteen minutes of good, heavy fighting, the kind that makes you glad that basic was so tough, even if you weren't glad when it was happening. The Skinnies had rounded up enough support that they made a real push up the eastern side. When they met DiMaglio and my rifle they fell back some because that thing was stronger than anything they could be expected to lug around themselves. DiMaglio held on through some pretty heavy fire including grenades and incendiary rounds, and held that corner for us. They moved up the west in slightly less strength, too, at the same time. I sent Bester and Aligma through the building in front of us, and they managed to get to a third-floor strong point and lay down some good fire on the eastern flank that took off the heat.

They had enough reserves that they swung farther around to the east while keeping up the pressure, and pretty soon DiMaglio had turned so that he was laying down fire due east, while I was supporting with fire to the north, and Bester and Aligma were helping from up high. About the time DiMaglio called "Last clip!" I heard Jonesy shout "Incoming!" and my stomach dropped to my heels. I tossed DiMaglio a belt full of grenades as party favors and took off to Jonesy's position.

The heavy mech was up and tromping down the western road. I dunno how it was up after that EMP, but it was. Maybe our suits would boot back up, now, but only mine was around to test, and I had better things to do. I took a few shots up the road at the infantry, Jonesy did too, and I tried to think. Big mean thing incoming, no way to move, and had wounded. No comm. Bad situation all around.

I mentally ticked through the ordnance we had and came up empty. Some grenades, but those wouldn't stop it or even slow it down, and no way was I going to get anyone close enough to use one. The only thing that could stop it was a rocket launcher, and we didn't have one of those, because the squad leader had it, and he was injured. Injured right next to me! I ran for the suit, kicking myself. If I made it out of this alive, it wouldn't be because of a surfeit of brains, that was for sure.

I ran over to Bright's suit about the time DiMaglio started throwing grenades for good measure, and that was when he got hit. Dunno what did it, but something caught him two in the chest and he went down. I screamed for Jonesy who came runnin', then I started doing some fast thinking. "Jonesy, toss me the medkit outta Bright's belt, then get Bester and Aligma down here!" DiMaglio wasn't hit bad, something small caliber, but it made a little hole going in and a good-sized hole coming out. Sounded like a lung was popped, too, so his body was ignoring all that throat stuff and trying to breathe through his chest. The med docs have mastered some things I'd never even have heard of, and sucking chest wounds was one. Used to be you'd just write someone off, but nowadays they've got something that comes out like shaving cream and sets up like concrete. I sprayed a few dollops in DiMaglio's front, rolled him over and gave him some extra-sized dollops in his back, and gave him a shot of the first thing I could find. He managed a little smile and handed me his gun.

The eastern edge was getting a might punchy by this point, having had no one to play with for a while. The last three of my squad ran out of the building and took a quick look at DiMaglio, but had the good sense to say nothing, start shooting, and wait for me to talk. "Alright, Jonesy, go keep that heavy interested, get him moving this way. Bester, you and Aligma load up Bright's launcher. Get the smallest thing you've got and put one in that building northeast. Enough to cause a ruckus. Then get up a few floors nearby and get ready to take down that heavy. Go!"

I kept up fire with whatever I had left, which wasn't much. The rifle was out, I was down to a last clip on the big pistol, and the two small ones weren't even enough to get noticed. Bester and Aligma hefted the launcher and blew the office building katty-corner from us into a buncha little pieces. Better than I'd hoped, because the southern wall fell out and effectively blocked our eastern flank. I fired north some, but it looks like the Skinnies had noticed the Heavy and were expecting to follow its advance in. So the fight all shifted west at that point.

I got over behind Jonesy and stood there while 60 feet of unpleasant (and near as many tons) came stomping down the road at us. It was a few blocks away, and you don't think about how fast something's moving when it's that big, but it only takes a few steps to cover a lot of ground. Jonesy and I held our fire and hoped it didn't notice us, but after a bit there was enough infantry closing in the last block that we just had to. Jonesy flipped it to full auto and ripped through sixty rounds in a couple of seconds, then got up and ran for it just as the autocannon opened up on his position. The rounds on that beast are about fist-sized, and they tore up that rifle but good. Then it was up to Bester.

The heavy stomped into the last block right about on time. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I knew the doctrine said Bester would be sighting right for the crotch; first of all because it's humiliating to get shot there, and secondly, that's the joints for both legs. A good hit could disable one or both, and that's as good as dead. I spent the whole time peering through two windows, wondering when Bester was gonna fire, and then he did.

Even the smallest thing Bright was packing was still designed to go a mile or so before it blew up. This went about a couple hundred feet, which is about the size of the explosion. I hit the deck a moment too late, and Jonesy had been leaning against the building anyway, but even so we felt the heat ripping through the intersection as that thing went off. I stuck my head up and saw the heavy toppling down – whether or not it was a good hit, that was enough for us. I ran up into the building to check on my boys; Bester was down and Aligma was dragging him. Between the two of us we managed to get him down to the street next to Bright and DiMaglio just in time for the next disaster to strike.

There was a vehicle incoming from the west, pretty fast, along the road we were holding. It didn't much look like it was gonna stop. But it didn't much look like something the Skinny military would be driving either. I didn't fire and motioned for Aligma and Jonesy not to either.

It was a Skinny vehicle, civilian, internal combustion. Simple enough that the EMP hadn't taken it out. A truck. And Claybaugh was driving it. "Sorry, sir, ran into a bit of trouble back there." I mentally awarded him every medal I could think of. He swung down out of the cab and pointed to the bed. "I got my suit up on it and another I found, I think maybe Jonesy's."

"How'd you get the suits on there?" I asked. Claybaugh pointed at the winch on the truck. A tow truck. I admit, I laughed out loud. "Alright, hoist up Bright, we'll see if we can hold back the ocean." We were down to handhelds and a single large pistol, but the Skinnies weren't about to go picking their way over the carcass of a heavy mech to get at us, and the few who thought about it got shots from us. I glanced back and saw Claybaugh hook the winch in Bright's belt and drag him up onto the bed, then lash him down with packing straps. All I could think was that if Bright was awake in there, he was going to be pissed, and if he wasn't, he would be when we told him about it.

"Alright, boys, we're leaving. Help me get these guys in." We piled into and onto the truck, then belted in the wounded for good measure. "Private, you got a rifle?" I called. Claybaugh answered 'no sir, but I got rounds,' so Aligma and I swung a rifle onto the back of the bed. Claybaugh hopped in the driver's seat, Jonesy took shotgun, and Aligma and I hopped on the bed and manned the rifle.

The back window was blown out anyway, so Claybaugh turned and shouted, "Where to?"

"Not here! Head south, step on it, and I'll tell you when you can step off!"

Claybaugh gunned the engine, popped out the clutch, and south we went.


End file.
